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     Volume 5 Issue 102 | July 7, 2006 |


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Trivia
Music

Music was first sent down a telephone line in 1876
So you think downloading music from the Internet via a phone line is a really cool modern thing? Not so.

In 1896, Thaddeus Cahill filed a patent on the "art of and apparatus for generating and distributing music electronically" and until 1914 he fed music signals down AT&T's telephone lines with his Telharmoniums apparatus. And he wasn't even the first. Elisha Grey transmitted music over a telephone line in 1876 - the same year the telephone was invented. Grey invented the first electronic music instrument in 1874, calling it the "Musical Telegraph."

Alexander Graham Bell also designed an experimental "Electric Harp" for speech transmission over a telephone line using similar technology to Gray's. Bell also was a teacher of speech to the deaf. In 1879 he created an audiometer to detect hearing loss. That is why the degrees of loudness came to be measured in bels or decibels.

Artists were known by symbols long before Prince was
Long before Prince became the artist known by a symbol, English poets signed their work with a symbol. In fact, only two Old English poets are known by name, Cynewulf and Caedmon.

Old English differed greatly from the English of today, it basically resembled modern German. In the 7th Century, an unlearned cowherd, Caedmon wrote some of the first English poems, of which only 9 lines survived. The second known poet Cynewulf, of the 8th century, also signed his work with a symbol. Cynewulf used a kind of cypher, or anagram, made up of ancient figures called runes, an alphabet used by early Germanic tribes preceding the use of the Roman alphabet in England.

The Beatles song Hey Jude was first called Hey Jules
The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" does not stand for "LSD." The title actually comes from John Lennon's son Julian, who left his mark on more than one Beatles song. His drawing of a nursery school classmate, Lucy O'Donnell caught his father's eye. When asked what it was called, Julian replied, "Lucy in the sky with diamonds."

When John Lennon divorced Julian's mother Cynthia, Paul McCartney composed a little song to cheer the boy up. Eventually Hey Jules evolved into Hey Jude.

Prior to being named "The Beatles" the band had several names. In the late 1950s, John Lennon and Paul McCartney formed a group to play skiffle music in Liverpool pubs. They began as the Quarrymen, then became: Johnny and the Moondogs, the Moonshiners, and Long John and the Silver Beatles. They became "The Beatles" in 1960. The band broke up in 1970.

Source: http://www.didyouknow.cd

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